10/22/08 Best Practices

Issues in Pastoral Ministry:
How long should a pastor stay?

A couple of issues back I included in the Reading for Pastors section a link to an article by Rick Warren, where he expressed the opinion that pastors need to stay longer with their churches if they want them to grow. Quote:

"A long pastorate does not guarantee a church will grow, but changing pastors every few years guarantees a church won't grow. Can you imagine what the kids would be like in a family where they got a new daddy every two or three years?"

This quote evoked several responses about pastoral tenure.

When I first started ministry, Jim Cress told us at a workers' meeting that the average pastoral tenure at the time was less than two years. (It has increased since.) My wife and I tend to be nest builders: We've been in two of our churches longer than ten years. So I'm very interested in this topic.

I asked two friends, both who have worked as pastors and studied pastoral concerns for many years, to explain their opposing points of view.

Thoughts on this discussion? Write me at BestPractices@ameritech.net.

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Longer pastorates mean church growth
Monte Sahlin, VP for Research and Special Projects, Ohio Conference

As part of the Faith Communities Today (FACT) ongoing research project, we tested the idea that the length of pastoral tenure has some effect on church growth. We compared those congregations where there had been growth in the number of active members (not names on the books) over the previous five years with those congregations where the active membership had declined over the previous five years. What we found was that growing churches are more than twice as likely to have had one pastor in the previous ten years, while declining churches were more than 50% more likely to have had four or more pastors in the previous ten years. (See this graph.) Where there had been two or three pastors in the previous ten years, the data were inconclusive. We found a definite correlation between church growth and pastors who stay in the same church for ten years or more.

These are data specific to the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the U.S. It is based on a random sample of 413 local churches for which we gathered and analyzed a large amount of data: more than 300 specific items covering every aspect of church life, outreach and evangelism. [Research by the Institute of Church Ministry at Andrews University, published in Adventist Congregations Today, 2003, available from the Center for Creative Ministry].

There are undoubtedly other considerations when it comes to deciding the best practices regarding pastoral tenure. We tested only its correlation to church growth. There may be administrative reasons why we keep pastoral tenure shorter than seems to be optimum for church growth. Perhaps those administrative reasons are more important than church growth.

The question we have to ask is this: Is our policy mission-driven or not?

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Long pastorates aren't good for us
Dan Serns, NPUC Ministerial Director

With some exceptions, long pastorates in the Adventist movement may be negative for both the district and the pastor's family. A good guideline: if I stay too short a time I won't develop the relationships I need to lead, but if I stay too long I won't develop the systems of ministry that will outlast my stay. This is why I follow this rule of thumb: anything over seven years in the same position is borrowed time, whether in the field, the office or the classroom.

The best justification to remain longer is if there is incredible growth in the area being served, or there is a new assignment added. I've always felt that after 3-4 years in an assignment, if I couldn't see clear growth, I should take on a different challenge and give someone else a chance at what I was doing. It there was rapid, sustained growth then I had a good reason to stay longer. Our family has loved most things about the places we've served, but have also enjoyed the opportunity for a fresh start when the time came for a move.

Watching some of my peers who resist almost every more, it seems that those who need a fresh start most desperately are sometimes those who fight it most vehemently. It makes it difficult for everyone, and for the ongoing rapid growth of God's work.

Rick Warren's analogy of a family getting a new daddy every few years highlights the difference between a congregational-minded church (where "daddy" is the pastor) and our Adventist movement (where "daddy" is supposed to be our Heavenly Father as revealed to each member of the congregation through personal Bible study). Warren has many great ideas, but "long pastoral tenure" doesn't hold up when filtered through the inspired insights we have in Evangelism, Christian Service, Gospel Workers, and Pastoral Ministry.

Quotes on pastoral tenure from Pastoral Ministry.